Week 1 presentation: some historic examples of technology and media

The cyborg does not dream of community on the model of the organic family, this time without the oedipal project. The cyborg would not recognize the Garden of Eden; it is not made of mud and cannot dream of returning to dust.

Donna Haraway, “A Cyborg Manifesto: Science, Technology, and Socialist-. Feminism in the Late Twentieth Century”. 1991

The monolith, which of course looks remarkably like an iPhone, from Stanley Kubrick’s 1969 sci-fi classic, 2001: A Space Odyssey

How has technology changed over the last 30 years?

How has physical changes in technology affected the way we interact, consume and share media?

What are the key developments in technology that have changed the way we live, share information and produce media?

The following is a very compressed, simplified, timeline of technological developments over the last 30 years. Consider which of these devices, or technologies you remember first becoming available. Reflect on what they meant for you and the way you interacted with other people as well as media.

As well as the, somewhat entertaining, benefit of seeing these technologies with hindsight, consider what led to their development.

What were the commercial, societal and technological changes that ‘produced’ each of these items or media technologies? Think about this in terms of your first project, what is the broader historic context of the concept you have chosen to critique?

From a theoretical perspective it is almost impossible to continue talking about ‘new media’. Is television a new media? It used to be a new media in the 1950s. The same may be said for radio in the 1920s or cinema at the beginning of the 20th century.

The following images are from these two timelines, there are many other expamples of technology timelines available as reference: https://www.entrepreneur.com/slideshow/295683 https://www.entrepreneur.com/slideshow/295841 https://www.timetoast.com/timelines/980-s-and-1990-s-technology https://www.businessinsider.com/18-tech-products-that-didnt-exist-10-years-ago-2017-7#15-uber-12

1981: IBM came up with the idea of a personal computer. This was a revolutionary idea at the time.

It featured the new operating system MS-DOS 1.0.

1994: Sony released the first PlayStation in Japan. It was considered Sony’s most important product since the Walkman. It launched in the U.S. in September 1995 and saw instant success.

Although mobile phones emerged on the market in the 1980s, it wasn’t until 1994 that Nokia released its first cell phone, the Nokia 1011.

Brothers Thomas and John Knoll spent years of coding and development to create a photoediting program. They eventually caught the attention of Adobe.

With Adobe’s investment and help from its staff, Photoshop 1.0 was put on the market in February 1990.

Replacing VHS, DVD (short for “digital video disk”) was developed in 1995 and put on the market in 1996. And accompanying the DVD was the world’s first DVD player, the Toshiba SD-3000.

On June 23, 1996, Nintendo 64 launched in Japan, becoming the first home console to feature an analog stick as its primary control. The console was a major breakthrough in the gaming industry, allowing users to aim with precision and control like never before.

Google co-founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin met in 1995 at Stanford University. By 1996, the two were writing a program for a search engine called Backrub -- and after Backrub’s success, Brin and Page registered domain name Google.com in 1997.

* Note that Google’s entire index at this point in time contained 25 million pages.

What was the rate of development of the information Google made searchable over the last 20 years?

In 2000, camera phones officially became commercially available. While a number of big electronics companies began rolling out their own versions, Sharp’s J-SH04 was the first to the market.

While the USB flash drive was patented in 1999

by Israeli company M-Systems, it wasn’t until 2000 that the first USB flash drive was sold in the U.S. by IBM. Called the DiskOnKey, the USB held only eight megabytes.

Launched in 2004 from his Harvard dorm room, Mark Zuckerberg created what would become the world’s largest social media network, Facebook -- then referred to as “The facebook.”

Two decades after the CD-ROM and a decade after the DVD came the Blu-ray disc, launched in 2006. The Blu-ray disc supported the world’s new high definition video demands, with greater storage capacity and higher quality videos.

In early 2007, Steve Jobs took the stage at Macworld in San Francisco and revealed a “revolutionary product” -- the iPhone. The smartphone that changed the way the public looked at phones was a three-in-one product: “a widescreen iPod with touch controls, a mobile phone and a breakthrough internet communications device.”

Also in 2007, Amazon released the Kindle. A devices that would enable users to browse, buy, download, and read e-books, newspapers, magazines and other digital media via wireless networking to the Kindle Store.

In 2010 Instagram launched, as a photo and video sharing social networking service created by Kevin Systrom and Mike Krieger.

In 2012 Facebook acquired the service for approximately US$1 billion in cash and stock.

Uber was founded as a startup in 2009. While the company has been mired in scandal after scandal, Uber remains one of the world’s most valuable startup at about $62 billion and its business is still growing.